Africa Business Communities Interview with Jorij Abraham

Jorij Abraham is an Ecommerce generalist with more than 15 years experience in integrating marketing, business processes and information technology to build online turnover. He is currently the Managing Director of Ecommerce Foundation, a global digital trading entity that is now welcoming partnerships in Africa.

What does your company do?

The Ecommerce Foundation has as its mission to facilitate global digital trade. We do this in several ways. First of all by offering 20+ ecommerce reports about selling online in 50+ countries worldwide. The reports are downloaded more than 44.000 times a year and are used both by industry experts as well as policy makers. We also host the EcommerceWiki, an online community where together with 22.000 ecommerce professionals we create an online handbook about everything related to ecommerce. Finally, last October we launched Safe.Shop, the global ecommerce trustmark.

Tell us more about Safe.Shop please.We see that the global ecommerce market is growing very rapidly with more than 17% last year. Consumers are however hesitant to buy from national and foreign small and medium sized webshops because of a lack of trust. They prefer to go for the big brands or market places (which charge a fee). With Safe.Shop we help consumers and merchants to shop and sell worldwide with confidence.

And how does Safe.Shop work?In every country we are looking for a reliable local partner. This may be the national ecommerce or retail association but can also be a local legal firm, specialized in consumer and/or IT law. Our local partner certifies the local webshops. Is the webshop a real organization? Does it allow consumers to return product and get their money back? Is their data stored safely? In short, does the webshop work according to the Global Ecommerce Code of Conduct we defined together with 20 countries (including representatives of South Africa and Nigeria). Companies who are certified are allowed to show the Safe.Shop trustmark on their website. Consumers can click on the logo and are then redirected to Safe.Shop where they can check if the company is really what it claims to be. What are the ambitions of Ecommerce Foundation going forward?

We are now either live or going live this quarter in 15 countries (a.o. Brazil, Germany, Russia, China, Croatia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Iceland, Netherlands, Romania and Switzerland). Our goal is to have 30 countries on board at the end of 2018. With Ecommerce Africa we have our first partner in Africa but we are still looking for reliable partners in other African nations. Legal firms (at least with 10 FTE) specialized in consumer and ecommerce/IT law are welcome to contact me.